Wiggins willing to fight from front

A relaxed, focused and ready Bradley Wiggins is relishing the tag of Tour de France favourite.

On June 30 in Liege, Wiggins will aim to become the first British Tour winner - fulfilling Team Sky's stated aim - after enjoying a remarkable series of results this season.

"It's a good position to be in now, going into the Tour de France as the favourite," Wiggins said.

"No-one would've given me that tag a few years ago so it's just a mark of how much I've moved on as an athlete. My performances speak volumes and I'm trying to embrace that because it may never ever happen again."

The 32-year-old, three-times an Olympic champion on the track, has won the Paris-Nice, Tour de Romandie and Criterium du Dauphine stage races in a sequence never before achieved. The last person to win Paris-Nice and Romandie in the same year was five-time Tour champion Eddy Merckx.

Wiggins was speaking from Majorca, where he is fine tuning preparations for the Tour under the supervision of coaches Shane Sutton and Tim Kerrison.

Sutton, something of a father figure for the Londoner, describes the current stage of training as "putting the hundreds and thousands on the ice cream".

Wiggins' confidence is due to his results and he does not see why the successful streak should end before Paris on July 22.

"There's no reason to think when we roll down the ramp in Liege that that's not going to continue happening," Wiggins added.

"It's just continuing what we've been doing, not trying to get ahead of ourselves and taking it one day at a time."